What is in Our Power and What is Not: A Short Exploratory Course of the Key Stoic Idea, by Keith Seddon

From tomorrow, we’ll be posting a series of five excerpts over the next week from Keith Seddon’s Stoic Serenity: A Practical Course on Finding Inner Peace, focussing on the theme of ‘what is in our power and what is not’, which was a core part of Epictetus’ approach to understanding Stoic philosophy. Indeed, for Epictetus, it was arguably the best ‘gateway’ into Stoic philosophy for his students.

These excerpts will include recommended passages from Stoic authors to read on the theme, and exercises you can do to implement Stoic advice. The idea is that readers of the Stoicism Today blog might like to take 10 or 15 minutes to do the exercises from each excerpt. And please do write in the comments below how the exercises are going, and any reflections on the effectiveness of approaching philosophy as a way of life from Epictetus’ angle of ‘knowing what is in your power and what is not’!

With thanks to Keith Seddon for allowing this chapter to be reproduced on the blog.

Stoic Serenity

More about Keith Seddon & Stoic Serenity: Keith Seddon is director of the MA and PhD programmes in Ancient Philosophy at Warnborough College, Ireland. He is a freelance academic and writer, who started the ‘Stoic Foundation’ in 2000, an educational trust, offering advice, support and a correspondence course (on which his book Stoic Serenity, from which our extract is taken, is based) in practical Stoic philosophy to anyone interested in taking up Stoicism as a philosophy to live by. Our thanks go to Keith for allowing his work to be reproduced on this blog.